An ungodly sound unlike anything I've heard before sweeps through the valley. It conjures images of primitive flying reptiles that screech as they swoop to grasp you in their claws and carry you off into the craggy mountain mists. The blood-chilling shriek stops. Silence. Deep silence. Then out of the night a low rumble rolls up the valley. Someone yells "the horses!" as the thunder of a hundred hooves stampede past camp unseen.

David Dorsey fades into the blackness with his rifle, heading in the direction in which the unknown waits. Wanda Williams and two of her wranglers leave the circle of firelight and with knives drawn head into the night to cut free the few staked horses, and, if possible, bring them into camp. The rest of us stand looking into the dark asking each other: "What's happening? Can you see anything?"

Two shots ring out, more thundering hooves, silence. Wanda, Ginger Dowd, and Francis Wilmets all come back with horses and tie them up at the edge of camp. David re-enters the circle trembling with adrenalin. Joyce Dorsey has stoked up the fire and had coffee brewing. We gather around the fire and await David's account of what happened or is happening, whichever the case.

David and his wife, Joyce, run Rainbow Mountain Outfitting, the exclusive guides for trail riding in the southern part of Tweedsmuir Provincial Park, 480 kilometres by air northwest of Vancouver. Covering an area of more than 981,000 hectares. Tweedsmuir is British Columbia's largest provincial park. Most of it, particularly its northern section, is deep wilderness. Its southern part, which is intersected by Highway 20, is more accessible and the focus of my interest

David's connections with his country go back to before there was such a thing as parks anywhere. His great-grandfather, old Squinas, an Ulgatcho Indian, looks out from a photograph and I see David as a man in his 70's. His grandfather, Thomas Squinas, trapped, hunted, guided, and, as Joyce says, "generally lived here." David's other grandfather and Wanda's father, Lester Dorsey, established trails and camps now used on the rides in the Beef Trail area. The Beef Trail, which runs parallel to Highway 20, enters the park from the confluence of the Dean River and Beef Trail Creek.

In 1952, Lester Dorsey and Thomas Squinas blazed the route Highway 20 takes from Anahim Lake through Heckman Pass. That arduous undertaking ended Bella Coola's isolation by connecting it to the interior (see our Summer 1989 issue.) David, in his turn, guided with his father since he was a boy. With all that considered I figure we would get a pretty informed opinion of what is going on around here.

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Photography and Text © Gary Fiegehen